Restaurant: Tang Dynasty
Location: 227 W Valley Blvd Floor 3 Ste 348, San Gabriel, CA 91778. (626) 213-2888
Date: July 15, 2023
Cuisine: Vaguely Hunan + skewers?
Rating: Tasty, almost Chinese “bar food”?
Part 2 of the 2023 “Staycation” brings us to Tang Dynasty on the 3rd floor of the Hilton Shopping Plaza.
Top floor of this mall I’ve been too lots of times.
The frontage.
This location used to be Chang’an — not the one in Tustin but a different Chang’an I never visited — but now it’s changed to Tang Dynasty and not bothered to change signs. They just wrote in Tang Dynasty by hand!
The somewhat bar-like interior. Unusually for the SGV it got crowded more like at 9pm.
Charcoal BBQ!
Cooking up some skewers.
The private room we should have had, but didn’t!
Preserved egg, eggplant, and pepper. That classic hunan “smash pot” with the very savory eggplant and the strong “msg” flavor — perfects from the delicious century egg.
Smashed Cucumber Salad (aka Hot and Sour Cucumbers). Wasn’t hot. It was a fine smashed cucumbers, although not as good as the one at the Juicy Dumpling lunch.
Spicy Bean Curd Salad. It wasn’t spicy, but the texture was nice.
Special Hunan Cured Duck. This was polarizing. I loved it. Medium spicy (but with some kick) boneless “duck jerky.” Unique and full of flavor.
House Special Seafood Pot. A huge (this was about 20″ across) bowl of wuhan dry pot style mixed seafood. Also corn, french fries, and cauliflower. The seafood was shell-on shrimp, crawfish, crab chunks, squid bits, and clams. Really quite awesome if super messy.
Crispy Chicken Skin Skewer. Awesome chicarone-like snack. Lots of mildly spicy cumin taste.
Chicken Cartilage Skewer. Great flavor, but you do have to crunch through them or spit out the “boney” bits.
House Special Lamb Skewer. Lots of fat and flavor.
Beef Liver Skewer. They called this Beef Loin on the menu. Ooops. This was the least favorite as it’s hard to eat too much liver. I’m not sure it’s beef liver either. Hard to tell.
Pork Belly Skewer. Bacon basically and awesome.
Sausage Skewer. Tasty, salty, and more than a little sweet.
Grilled Squid. Pretty delicious.
Skewers!
Grilled Leek. Nice and salty and delicious.
Stir fried cabbage. A great version of this classic.
Preserved and sliced pork stir fry. More or less Hunan with the chilies (not that spicy) and the yummy salty “preserved pork”. That stuff is great in that salty, smoked, cured way.
Another round of pork and chicken skin.
Tea Smoke Mushroom Dry Pot. More or less a stir-fry. I liked these fibrous mushrooms. Some pork snuck its way into this dish for exellent flavor.
Lamb Stew with Vermicelli. I didn’t notice the noodles but this was my least favorite dish as it was “mouton stew.” Good for what it was, but this is a gamey dish.
Scrambled Eggs with Shrimp. Kinda perfect version of this simple dish.
Yanchow Fried Rice. Moist, but not that fried. Sort of like the version you’d get at most Chinese American restaurants.
Mapo Tofu. A tiny bit of numbing. No meat. Nice texture to the tofu itself. This was enjoyable, but was a very middling Mapo.
Cumin Lamb. Interesting Hunan version of cumin lamb. The lamb was good and I enjoyed the chili and celery vibe.
Braised Pork Belly with Preserved Vegetables and Buns. I didn’t eat the buns but the pork belly itself (and the preserved veggies) was quite good. Salty and very tender (fatty) without that weird medicinal taste this dish sometimes has.
The server (Irene?) gave us a free round of these very sweet shots. Basically Jolly Rancher melted into a small amount of vodka? From the back, lemon, pomegranate, pineapple, and I can’t remember.
Overall, a very fun night. The place is interesting with the charcoal skewer and Hunan and shots mix. Food is actually pretty good. It’s not the spiciest Hunan, but it is actually kinda Hunan. And the skewers were very good. Relatively limited skewer menu compared to Charcoal #1. And that place is much better for skewers, but it does have the styrofoam problem.
